The Secret People Page 12

  ‘You know that thousands of years ago the whole continent of Europe was far warmer than it is now? That has been proved in lots of ways from fossils and remains. Among other things, traces of elephants have been found near Cromer, where there was once a forest. Elephants, mind you, not mammoths. The mammoths didn’t mind climates below zero, but the elephants have always required warmth. Furthermore, they have found the remains of the same species of elephant in Dorset, in a buried trench over twelve feet deep. Now nature doesn’t dig trenches through layers of chalk and flint to catch elephants; but there’s a creature that does, and that’s man. That elephant died a hell of a long time ago because man was there to kill him.

  ‘England was not yet an island. The present North Sea was a plain, connecting it with the continent. Subtropical fauna ranged and thrived there, but even then there were our ancestors to harry it into traps and slay it by other cunning. It is a common fault to put the appearance of man at too late a date. After all, we had to evolve, like the other species. There is still a tendency (it may be a lingering respect for Genesis) to picture man appearing suddenly and fully formed, to the great consternation of all the other denizens of the world. He did not. He climbed as slowly and painfully as the rest. Perhaps those men who hunted elephants across North Europe did not look much like us, but even at that remote date, they were a long jump ahead of the animals they slew.

  ‘Nor were the men all of one type. They, like the other creatures, had adapted to different climates. Until they had evolved clothes, discovered fire and other means of protection from extreme heat and cold, they were as subject to natural conditions as the animals themselves. Each race must have lived in its own zone with very little trespassing either to north or south.

  ‘But in the course of time, the zones shifted. The earth’s axis tilted; the sub-tropical flora began to perish. Each summer there was a little more ice round the poles, and each winter saw the Arctic Circle pushed a little farther south. It was slow – a matter of a few inches at a time – but it was relentless. The ice crept down, driving everything before it. The winters grew harder and longer; the animals went south, and the hunters followed. North Europe became temperate, then cold. Still the ice pursued, and the men from the north were driven down upon the inhabitants of the torrid lands in the south.

  ‘The races did not mix. The original inhabitants were a smaller, weaker species than the invaders, and unable to resist the successive waves of humanity rolling in from the north; they were, in fact, the ancestors of the pygmies. The northerners were a hardier, more adaptable race for whom life had been less easy than it was for the others; there could be no question which was the better fitted to survive. There was a natural limit to the number which the land could support, and it became clear that if anyone was going to perish through starvation, it would not be the newcomers. The pygmies took their chance of survival and began to migrate southward in their turn. They took to the great forests, and hid themselves in jungle depths so inhospitable and unattractive that no race has ever yet troubled to dislodge them.

  ‘It was one of the great changes of the world. The ice caps, creeping closer from north and south, compressed all life into the equatorial belt. Not only were the pygmies driven south, but other, similar races in other parts of the world were forced from the open, fertile country to seek refuges where they might survive. About that time the Andamanese must have reached their islands, the Sakai have found Sumatra, the Semangs, Borneo, and the New Guinea Pygmies have hidden themselves in their impenetrable country. And there they have all remained, for though the ice receded, the invaders did not. Their progeny spread to cover the north once again, but there was no racial withdrawal from the southern lands. That is what I meant when I said that these were real pygmies.’

  ‘That this was once all pygmy country, and these have survived?’

  ‘Exactly. They were driven into inhospitable regions; they took to living in caves. They found that this district was riddled with them, and they went deeper. Though, mind you, none of this happened suddenly; it was an instinctive move for self-preservation going on for generation after generation as conditions grew worse; there can have been little of conscious flight about it. While some made for the jungles they have never left, others reverted to cave dwelling, withdrawing more and more, spending less and less of their time on the surface, hiding from a world in which they could not compete, until at last there came generations who knew the outside only from hearsay as a place of discouragement and terror. So the elders died and the last link was snapped; communication with the surface ceased. They dug themselves deep into the earth. They joined cavern with cavern to form a subterranean country. They learned how to grow the giant fungi for food, and retained the secret of manufacturing their luminous fluid. In the end the life of the outer world became no more than a tradition kept alive by the occasional arrival of wanderers such as ourselves. The dominant races pursued their appointed course on the surface: the memory of the pygmies grew fainter until, at last, it was entirely rubbed away, and they were forgotten, lost.’

  There was silence for a time after Gordon stopped speaking. Mark considered the theory. Fantastic, of course, but then, so was the pygmies’ presence, and there must be some explanation of it. There could be no doubt that the caverns had been inhabited for a very long time. The fact that no tradition survived above indicated an immense period of utter isolation.

  ‘When do you think all this happened?’ he asked.

  Gordon shrugged his shoulders. ‘Hard to say. Somewhere in the Lower Paleolithic, I should guess – towards the end of it, about the Acheulean.’

  ‘No,’ said Mark. ‘Tell me in English. How many years?’

  Gordon considered for a moment. ‘Perhaps a hundred thousand years.’

  ‘A – what?’ Mark blinked.

  ‘Yes, I mean it. The trouble with people like you is that you have such a poor idea of the antiquity of man. I tell you that the pygmies represent one of the oldest living races, and you’re staggered by a hundred thousand years. It’s a mere flea-bite in natural development. Why, Piltdown Man probably lived three times as long ago as that. The effect of all this Genesis business is to make people believe that nothing ever happened before about 2000 BC. I assure you it did, and it had been happening for a long time.

  ‘Just to cheer you up, I’ll admit that there are two bad snags I’ve struck. One is those Egyptian gods, and the other is these lights.’ He glanced up at the roof. ‘They’ve really got me beat – in spite of what I said before – and the containers are more puzzling than the fluid inside them. I don’t see how these people, virtually a stone-age race, found out how to make ’em – nor what they’re made of, for that matter. In fact, they’re the weakest spot in the whole theory, blast them. If it wasn’t for the lights, they could never have –’

  He stopped suddenly. Mark, looking up, saw that a few white figures had reappeared in the passage mouths. A shout from Smith called everyone to the top of the barrier. A score or so of pygmies emerged, and strung out into a line close to the back wall. Each was carrying something which it was impossible to determine at their distance.

  Since there was no longer anything to be gained by surprise, the defenders had no reason to lie low. A volley of stones hurtled towards the dwarfs. The majority fell short, and those which did not were so spent that they could easily be dodged.

  ‘No good,’ grumbled the man beyond Gordon. ‘Better wait till they come on a bit.’

  But the pygmies were in no hurry. Each was doing something with the instrument he carried.

  ‘What’s their little game?’ added the speaker.

  A moment later he knew. The pygmies swung their right arms, and a flight of sharp stones whistled through the air. One took him full in the face, toppling him backwards off the wall. Mark, Gordon and the rest dropped hurriedly to full length behind the parapet.

  ‘Slings. Damn it, why didn’t we think of them?’ Gordon muttered.

  Mark
put his eye to his former spyhole. The slings were putting up a barrage which whistled low over his head. Something issuing from the right-hand tunnel caused him to give a whistle of surprise. Gordon risked his head above the edge to see what had caused it; he kept it there until a stone thudded against a trunk unpleasantly close.

  ‘Ingenious devils,’ he said, ducking again.

  The round head of a mushroom, looking like a huge, unpainted archery target, slowly emerged into their caves. Once in the open, it moved sideways to make room for another following behind it, and slightly forward to allow the slingers to throw over it from their back wall position. The second mushroom head drew out and ranged itself alongside the first. Another followed, and another until a long rank was formed.

  The fungi had been felled with particular care not to sever the heads. The trunk was carried by several men, while the round top made an excellent shield for them. When the first rank of portable defences was complete, a second was begun. Not until three such lines had been formed did the advance start. Then they moved forward slowly and deliberately, keeping their formation while the slingmen, acting as artillery, kept up a ceaseless shower of sharp stones.

  ‘They’ve got the right idea,’ said Gordon, with detached admiration. ‘Pygmy tanks now in action.’

  The opposition to the advance was slight as yet, being confined to a few experimental stones pitched uselessly against the mushroom heads. As the front rank passed the halfway stage, Ed rose to his feet and hurled a stone with all his force. It struck one of the white circles with an audible thud, and embedded itself in the pulpy mass. There was no other result. Ed dropped back with a grunt of disgust. Several others risked the slingmen, and imitated him with as little success; those stones which did not bounce off stayed to stud the white circles with dark flecks. The advance never hesitated.

  Smith sent word down the line for clubs to be got ready. It looked like hand-to-hand fighting, for the pygmies would be able to advance under cover to the foot of the wall. So far the defenders had no apprehension of real trouble; their attitude was still an appreciation of the little men’s ingenuity. After all, what could the attackers do? Merely attempt to scale the wall; it would be easy enough to push them off.

  The advancing ranks increased the angle of the mushroom heads until, when they reached the wall, they were upright, forming a roof upon which missiles rained down. Only three had failed to make the journey, having stopped when their carriers were struck by lucky rather than skilful shots.

  Against the wall they stopped. The defenders were unable to see what was taking place, but it was guessed that the facing of mushroom heads was either having footholds cut in it, or being pulled down to expose the more easily climbable trunk ends. A sudden diversion occurred. Mark heard one of their men shout, and saw him pointing to the passages. More figures were entering. They were pallid, like the rest, but taller, and better built.

  ‘Good Lord, they’ve got the “natives” with ’em,’ Gordon murmured.

  The slingmen were still in action, so that the ‘natives’ covered the first few yards at a crouching run, keeping their heads below the line of fire. As they drew nearer they straightened up and increased their pace. An intensified fire from the slingers still kept the defenders behind their parapet. The leading ‘natives’ rushed across the ground, and climbed upon the rear rank of mushroom heads. It became clear that the pygmies’ intentions had been not only to provide shields for themselves, but to make a platform upon which the ‘natives’ could be brought more nearly to the height of the defenders.

  The slingers stopped as the ‘natives’ climbed and ran on. The defenders rose, hurling a shower of stones. The ‘natives’ were in great majority, but at severe disadvantage. It was difficult to move fast over the uneven platform, and they were fully exposed at short range. Their only arms were stone knives. Nevertheless, they came on. Before long they were battling with the men at the wall. Mark’s stone club rose and fell with the rest. He struck without anger, coolly and shrewdly. He did not seem able to develop a fighting rage against these men. He aimed at the shoulders, content to numb the arms; he had still a feeling that this was a kind of mock battle, part of a great misunderstanding.

  They were fighting now all along the line, and most of the men were not using his half-hearted tactics. They fought to kill or maim. Mark supposed that his freshness made the difference; had he been here for years like many of them, he would have known how they felt. Along in the middle of the line he could see Smith hammering away with a short club in each hand, while Ed made flailing sweeps with his mace.

  The momentary lull passed as a fresh rush of ‘natives’ came on. One dodged within Mark’s guard, tearing a ragged scrape on his upper arm. It was nothing much; he scarcely felt it, but it served to change his outlook. He began to lay about him in real earnest. Another man caught hold of his club, and tried to wrench it away. Mark’s left fist came up with all his strength to the right of the other’s jaw. The man reeled away, and the next comer felt the full weight of the club. The fury of the attack began to slacken; the ‘natives’ were losing heart or growing less rash. Mark lowered his arm and stood panting, only to square up swiftly as another white figure came charging at him. He swung up his club, but at the same moment the support beneath his left foot fell away, and he tripped. His club was knocked from his hand, and the ‘native’ bounded over the parapet almost upon him. He fended off a vicious swipe of the stone knife, and caught the man’s right wrist. For some seconds the two rolled this way and that in attempts to get the upper hand, then the ‘native’ suddenly went limp. Mark looked up to see Gordon bending over them.

  ‘Thanks!’ he said.

  He was lying in a shallow depression between two of the white trunks. A depression which he was quite certain had not been there a few minutes ago. One trunk must suddenly have subsided, and in doing so, upset him. But why?

  He crawled to a spot where he could look over the back of the wall, and found himself gazing into a pygmy face. Without hesitation he crashed a fist into it, and sent the owner tumbling backwards. There were others down there. But how had they got past the wall? He looked along and saw one in the act of emerging from a hole. The pygmies must have withdrawn logs from several places in the wall, under cover of their platform. In some spots those above were so jammed as to leave a way right through, whereas in others, such as that directly below him, the logs above had fallen down to close the hole. He caught up his fallen club, and sprang down with a shout. Only about a dozen of the pygmies were through so far, and when four or five other men joined him, they were soon accounted for. It became necessary, however, to set a guard on the holes to prevent more getting through.

  ‘Just as well I fell when I did,’ Mark thought. ‘A few more minutes, and they’d have been in in dozens.’

  He stood watching a hole in the middle of the wall. He was glad of the rest, for he had nothing to do now but keep an eye on it, and bring down his club on anything that came out of it.

  ‘Hey?’ called a voice above him.

  He looked up to see Ed’s tousled, full-bearded head.

  ‘Get me one of those puff-balls, will you? A ripe one, buddy, and handle with care.’

  ‘What about this?’ Mark pointed to the hole.

  ‘That’s OK. I’ll watch it.’

  Mark obediently sought one of the largest puff-balls and trundled it gingerly up to the wall.

  ‘Can you lift it?’ Ed inquired.

  Mark could, with some difficulty, for it was a cumbersome object. Ed reached down as far as possible, and between them they managed to get it intact to the top of the wall. There Ed sat down and began carefully to cut long incisions with a sharp stone. Mark stood below with attention divided between Ed’s operations and his guardianship of the hole. He was puzzled, for there was fighting still going on along the wall, and it was unlike Ed not to be in the thick of it.

  ‘What’s it for?’ he asked.

  Ed chuckled. ‘Come up and
see.’

  Mark climbed back to the wall top and sat down. A head was at once thrust experimentally out of the hole below. Mark dropped a stone on it, and it was withdrawn.

  Ed continued to make incisions radiating like meridians from the poles of the puff-ball. None of the cuts was deep enough to split the skin, but the whole was weakened almost to bursting-point. The fighting had now become half-hearted, compared with the first attack. Probably its object had been to keep the defenders employed while the pygmies climbed through their holes in the wall. Now that the rear attack had not come, the ‘natives’ were flagging.

  Ed examined his puff-ball, and grinned with satisfaction. He picked it up, raising it with both hands above his head. For a moment he poised, then he swayed forward, heaving with all his weight. The ball lobbed into the crowd of attackers. Two ‘natives’ went down beneath it as it burst. A cloud of white spores broke out like a flurry of snow. The men close to it were blotted from sight. A sound of coughing and spluttering arose from within the drifting mist. As it spread, growing more tenuous, the figures of ‘natives’ became visible, bent double in paroxysms of coughing, while with each breath they took, they drew more of the irritating feathery spores into their lungs. The cloud of white dust spread wider, afflicting more of the attackers. They lost all capability of fighting. Their eyes streamed so that they could barely see; they staggered to and fro, sneeezing, gasping, wheezing like the worst asthmatics. Ed gave a bellow of delighted laughter.

  ‘Hey, gimme your jacket, and fetch another,’ he directed.

  He began to swing the coat before him, fanning the drifting spores away from the wall.

  Within a few minutes there was a haze of spores all along the line, and the defenders had abandoned their clubs in favour of ragged improvised fans. The ‘natives’ were hopelessly demoralized. They could do little more than stagger, so exhausted were they with their efforts to cough up the fungus dust. The pygmies, below their testudo of mushroom heads, were in little better plight, for they had begun to breathe the spores which filtered through from above. Those who were not deafened by the sound of their own and other’s coughing must have ground their teeth with anger as the familiar roar of laughter rose once more from the defenders. There was nothing to be done. They were too hopelessly disorganized for further action. As best they could they crawled free of their mushroom shields and made their way, an orderless, anomalous crowd of choking, sneezing miserables, back to the passage mouths. Gusts of laughter from the wall harried them on.